Big Daddy Dispatch: August 2024 (Patreon)

 Dispatch Number Eighty-Eight: August 2, 2024

Greetings WHM Family!

 Pop the champagne! Season 14 is in the books and we are turning the chairs over for a well-deserved summer break. Well, it’ll be a break for us from recording, thankfully, but not for you folks because all August long we’ll be slinging hot new (on the Patreon) and likely new to you (on the Main feed) episodes each and every week!

What an incredible privilege it’s been to put out a quality program for you folks for another year! We’ve had a blast, hanging with old friends and new (see above), talking trash and chopping it up about movies. We hope you’ve enjoyed it half as much as we did, and we can tell you that Season 15 is going to be even better! Stick with us and stay cool for the summer, and enjoy a ton more content, while we re-charge our batteries and come back to you more excited than ever!

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

 Image Credit: We Hate Movies meets Paul Scheer by Stephen Sajdak

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 747 – Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 With Ben Worcester

 The boys get the segways back out and call Hooked on T.J. Hooker’s Ben Worcester back in to talk about the unwarranted sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, in which our portly security professional goes up against Neal McDonough. Is it possible for Paul Blart to be even occasionally respectable? Why hasn’t Kevin James broken into the action genre? Must movies like this run on cameos and “hey, that guy” side characters? Be on the lookout for an, er, unpleasant ice cream joke.

Episode 748 – Logan  (Patrons Only)

For this month’s WLM offering, Andrew, Steve, and Eric return to a simpler time, a time before Wolverine met a certain wise guy named Deadpool, and was just busy trying to keep X-23 out of the hands of government goons. Is Hugh Jackman’s take on Logan the best performance in all of the Marvel films, MCU or not? Can we go back to the comic book opening of Marvel Studios? Has Logan somehow become the only driver for a limos-only Uber service? Hopefully, Ethan Hawke will hear this and think we’ve done justice to his favorite Marvel movie.

Episode 749 – Despicable Me 2 with Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert

Andrew and Eric welcome back longtime brothers-in-pod Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey from the Talking Simpsons podcast to return once again to the world of Gru and his many minions, who are in the market for the lady of the house and secret evil lair. What is the legal status of these girls under Gru’s care? Does Gru have a humiliation fetish and how much does he spend on it? When will the RNC stop playing footsy and nominate a minion to run their party? Whatever you do, don’t let Pixar see this – they might own Gru after all of this.

Episode 750 – Alien: Resurrection

The gang heads back out into space – or, more accurately, just barely outside of Earth’s atmosphere – to check in on the xenomorph cloning program which is going – OH NO! How does this entry compare against other sequels in the realm of stacked casts? Is the human-baby alien really stupid or weirdly moving or both? Why don’t we get more space pirate adventures with Captain Michael Wincott? Just don’t have anything hanging on your boots, you might die!

Episode 751 – X-Men with Jamelle Bouie

Andrew, Chris, and Steve welcome back New York Times columnist and Unclear and Present Danger co-host, Jamelle Bouie to talk about the first X-Men movie, in which Magneto tries to turn the entire world into mutants. Can we get some better security and upkeep on Cerebro or what? Since when is Toad beating up anyone, let alone Cyclops and Jean Grey? Isn’t it better not having every single god damn thing being explained to you like you’re fucking eight years old? More than due respect to McKellen and Stewart, all possible disrespect to the film’s director.

Episode 752: Arachnaphobia with Paul Scheer

The fellas bring on How Did This Get Made’s Paul Scheer to discuss what can best be described as a family horror movie, in which whitest-man-ever Jeff Daniels battles a plague of super-spiders alongside John Goodman and Julian Sands. Would this have been better off as a B-movie? Did the producers somehow not know what they had with John Goodman’s character? Is this movie making fun of white flight or agreeing with it? Someone get us a bigger spider in here for the King Spider!

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew:   Big month for me and movie watchin’ — here’s some highlights, or I guess lowlights, depending:

 Piranha (1978): Finally got around to this one and yeah… it’s fine. I love Dante, and there’s some stuff to like about this, but Jesus Christ, those leads are dreadful. And you’re stuck with them on a fucking raft for 65% of the movie! Although, the sequence where all the piranhas are gnawing away at the corpse and in turn eating away at the raft itself was pretty cool. Of course, the finale is what you’re there for and that certainly doesn’t disappoint. Child endangerment at every turn? Yes, please! Man, piranha attacks or no, Dick Miller’s scuzzy riverside “resort” looks like a place you are GUARANTEED to catch chlamydia.

 Seven Samurai (1954): Caught the new 4K restoration at Film Forum and I gotta say, much like the Aliens 4K disc, there was too much digital “clean-up” for my taste. Now granted, I’m not saying AI was used to touch up Toshiro Mifune or anything like that, but it’s like all the grain was sucked right out of it. Here I was watching this incredible film that looked good, but somehow had less personality if that makes sense. Still a beautiful, funny, action-packed film, but the smoothness of it all kinda sucked.

 Prometheus (2012) / Alien: Covenant (2017): Lumping these two together just to say, hey, they’re both friggin’ great. If you hated Prometheus when it came out because it wasn’t about xenomorphs, I get it, but now having that knowledge, I’m encouraging folks to go back and take a look at it for what it really is: Royal Rid getting in there and giving us a wild-ass sci-fi adventure. And Covenant is great too, even if Rid was spooked by fan reactions to Prometheus and pulled back on his original idea for an all-Engineers movie. Anywho, they’re both great-ass movies IMO!

 North by Northwest (1959): I caught an absolutely stunning 70mm presentation of this, one of my fave Hitchcocks, at Film Linc this month and holy shit. If 70/35mm screenings are now officially the “on vinyl” of moviegoing, I’ll still be there without question for either format. But these really special 70mm shows, holy fuck, man. I’ve seen this movie at least 20 times, including several times on 35mm, but this was like watching it for the first time. It will be one of my top moviegoing experiences of this year. Thinking on how that Seven Samurai digital restoration looked, I mean, yeah, Film Fucking Forever!

The New Mutants (2020) - I said this on Letterboxd, but man, for all the bluster around this film’s release, I expected it to be way worse. It’s not good by any stretch, but you can see the seeds of a kinda cool movie in there. They needed to double down on the horror and expand the world a bit. As it is, it’s restrained and flat most of the time and the vibes are nowhere to be found. It’s got no atmosphere because you can tell the filmmakers were afraid to make it what they wanted it to actually be. But I thought the cast was good, actually, and it was cool seeing different mutants on-screen than the ones we’ve all seen in 12 different movies already. I liked the final set piece too. If it’s true that Jon Hamm actually did shoot an entire Mister Sinister storyline and they dropped it, I mean, that’s your movie right there, folks! What are you DOING?

Chris:   Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1: Look, I wanted to like this. I think Costner is ridiculous, but he is completely his own man and artist, and I would like to respect and support that if at all possible. Sadly, it is not possible at this juncture. This feels like one of those conservative-TV-on-the-big-screen Fandango event sprees but mushed into one uncompelling glob, only elevated by a sensational cast. This does not even feel complete as a chapter in a god-forsaken 16-hour blockbuster epic. There are parts that certainly carry some interest, but they are drowned out by the glut and gossamer of the set-up. And look, I get that times are different, and you don’t have as many movies that want to be for adults anymore, but I cannot get too crazed for a three-hour saga that never feels even half as powerful as an 80-odd-minute Allan Dwan Western from the salad days of the genre. Sorry, Eric!

 Happy Here and Now:  There are times when I can get on a very serious completist jag and I’ve been going off and on with 90’s indie powerhouse Michael Almereyda’s filmography for a while now and I nearly have him finished. Happy Here and Now, from 2002, is one of his least talked-about and also one of his best in my opinion, showing a lot of the bigger ideas he’d hunt in major works like Tesla, Marjorie Prime, and Experimenter in the gestation stage. This tech-mystery-comedy, which centers on a young woman looking for her sister who might have been seduced by a suave fireman over the internet, teems with ideas about the computer’s effects on identity and what you really know about the people you know. As with most Almereyda, there’s a crucial shagginess to the production and the setting – much of the action takes place in clutter-plagued homes and apartments with central hubs of electric communication, whether it be the internet or the radio. Great music too. Worth seeking out!

 MaXXXine: This is the first time where I have felt myself more in line with the Ti West haters than lovers. I just felt nothing for this, and I think it has something to do with scope. For all their issues, X and Pearl both felt authentically constructed and detailed as fictional worlds in specific American eras. This neither feels convincing as an LA movie nor as a Giallo riff. As a story, it never really came together for me, and all the talented performers West marches out feel as if they are in a fruitless search for any kind of consistent heartbeat to this thing and I just don’t think it’s there. All love for Mia Goth and most of the cast – nice work by musician Moses Sumney, especially – but I found it so difficult to care about anything that was happening in this.

Eric:   Ride Lonesome (1959): Still making my way through the Ranown Western box set and this is another standout alongside the still superior The Tall T. Randolph Scott is a bounty hunter this time and has his hands full with a bounty, a dame, and the indigenous population. Had a really good Dadfernoon. 

The Northville Cemetery Massacre (1976): If you ever wanted to see a very low budget biker vs. cops movie, this is for you. You won't believe this is directed by a young William Dear who is notable for Angels in the Outfield, Harry and the Hendersons, If Looks Could Kill (previous episode), and The Sandlot. Worth a look for the long and violent titular cemetery shootout sequence. 

 The Kirlian Witness (1978): Kind of not good, kind of boring, but I was hooked on it. A house plant witnesses a murder so our protagonist attempts to question the plant and find out the killer. A plant gets hooked up to a polygraph, so it's a recommend.

 The Maddening (1996): Mentally deranged Floridians Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson kidnap Mia Sara and her daughter. Detective Josh Mostel, of all people, is cold on the trail. An absolute bonkers domestic thriller/hellbilly horror movie that had my jaw dropping. Can't believe they let Danny Huston get away with this. Can't believe he directed it! Huge recommend. It's just so weird.

Knight Chills (2001): The lowest of budget. This movie kinda asks what if The Crow was a loser who was into D&D and shit? Well, if he was, he'd obviously come back to life in the form of a knight who kills people. Sounds kinda cool, right? It isn't. Not good! 

 Open Range (2003): Had a great time revisiting this for the first time since theaters. I completely forgot about Diego Luna being in it so that was a welcome surprise. Less wide in scope than Horizon, which is an advantage because that really tightens the narrative. It is, however, just as beautiful if not more. Robert Duvall turns in one of his career's best performances and it makes this worth checking out for that alone. Costner really is a master of the western and I think this is far and away his best work. 

 Blackhat (2015): I finally cracked open the new Arrow 4K set which includes the Director's Cut (on Blu-ray) and I think this now makes my top 3 Mann's alongside Heat and Thief. But hey, my views are eclectic so your views may vary. If you missed this one, jump on board and see the maybe only watchable Chris Hemsworth movie! 

Steve:Been a pretty fun month of movie watching, Deadpool & Wolverine not withstanding (hears boos, moves on)…

Alien³: Assembly Cut: I’ve only seen Alien³ a handful of times and I always found it boing as sin. I wanted to double check my Alien rankings in advance of our Alien: Resurrection episode and I noticed there was this superior cut I’d never seen! Goodie! It’s better, but I’m sorry folks, it’s still a pretty dull xenomorph outing and artistically, it doesn’t make up for that slowness. What you have is a really fun cast (Charles Dance needed more screen time!) and a pretty cool premise, with a lot of shuffling around waiting for something to happen. I wonder if there’s an even better cut out there, one more fitting of a Fincher movie, but this one ain’t for me.

DarkGame (2024): While looking up Chace Crawford on the old IMDb, I started looking up other Gossip Girl alums and lordy, poor Ed Westwick! This kind of feels like a fan film that couldn’t afford the Batman or Joker costumes and decided, fuck it! We’ll make it anyways. Someone is hosting a MURDEROUS game on the Dark Web (where your grandfather’s credit card information is stored) and it’s up to our dark, brooding detective to put a stop to these sick bastards! It’s cheap as hell, both financially and narratively, and I feel like me and my wife are the only non-Westwicks to see it. Please don’t join us.

Presumed Innocent (2024): Really loved this show (thanks for the rec, Andrew!) It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for: A 45-minute TV show that is for adults, addictive, and well-acted. Check, check and check. Jake Gyllenhaal is at his best when you don’t know if you’re supposed to root for him or want to throw him across the room, and this role fits him like a glove. He’s so endlessly unlikeable, you do wind up liking him in the end. The show is rounded out by excellent star turns by Peter Sarsgaard, Ruth Negga, Bill Camp, and Elizabeth Marvel. It’s just an ass magnet of a show that I hope remains one and done (though I’ll likely be back if it is).

Is Now a Good Time? (2024): Found this short while scrolling Letterboxd (thanks Felipe!), quickly searched for it on Youtube and was tickled to no end by this pitch black little masterpiece by Jim Cummings. I only was so-so on The Wolf of Snow Hollow, but I was impressed by Cummings, so I always knew I wanted to go back. It’s a great bit of marketing to drop this the same day that Deadpool & Wolverine came out, to show a completely out of their element huckster try to implant meaning where none should be found. Anecdotally, as a former employee of the mouse, this one definitely found a sweet spot for me. Give it the 12 minutes. You’ll laugh.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

 Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Wyatt from Oregon who asks: “Hey fellas! In honor of the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, what's an actor/character pairing that sounds perfect on paper, didn't work in execution, but you think deserves (or should've gotten) another shot on the big screen?"

Andrew: I’m just gonna come out and say it: Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider. Mark Steven Johnson totally dropped the ball with that first movie, and then, good god, the disaster duo, Neveldine/Taylor just shat out that second one with half the budget of the first. At no point was Cage ever able to play this character that he loves so much while working with a director that understood Cage himself as an actor, along with understanding the Ghost Rider character. I happen to think Ghost Rider is a pretty cool character and I’ll always be curious what a Ghost Rider movie would look like with Cage back on the bike, but also with competent direction leading the way.

Chris: This might be me beating a dead horse, but I do really wish we had seen one full, on-its-own Batman movie with Ben Affleck. When I decide to hurt myself and go back to rewatch Justice League or BvS, his parts are always what stick out to me, no matter how stupid the actual writing is or the direction. He has the correct take on Bruce Wayne, which is way more important than having your Batman figured out. Michael Keaton is the best because he’s great as both, and Clooney sucks because he was bad at both. Kilmer had a way better Wayne than Batman but it worked for the movie Schumacher was making. While in contrast, Affleck had a great Wayne and a Batman that might have worked in a different movie that isn’t trying to make Batman about terrorism without ever really talking about terrorism. Get me an S. Craig Zahler Batman movie with Affleck and I will be the first one in line.

Eric: Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face sounds perfect to me but I don't think we quite got it in Batman Forever. I think he's the type of actor who grounds a production. He tethers you to reality, so it is hard for him to be the over the top Adam West-ian type shtick he and everyone else was trying for in Batman Forever. Look at him in Men in Black. He is there to sell you on this universe. That's not what he's there for in Batman Forever, he's yelling over-the-top shit in purple make-up. I could really have seen him pull off a more grounded more-so Nolan or Burton-type of Two-Face. 

 Another example could be George Clooney as Bruce Wayne and Batman. This all sounds like I hate those Joel Schumacher Batman movies, and I really don't, but certain people got the assignment (Arnold Schwarzenegger and, to an extent, Jim Carrey) and others (Tommy Lee Jones / George Clooney) didn't and their performances feel a little out of place.

 Prior to the Disney+ Kenobi series, I would have answered this with Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi! 

Steve: Welp, a lot of good ones have been taken off the board here, so I guess I have to go with Tom Jane as the Punisher. That movie doesn’t know what it’s doing, but I could see Jane doing a full-on Comic Book version (white gloves and white boots!) of the murderous psychopath, because he really was somehow charming and effective in that awful movie. And he really wanted to make it work! Justice for Tommy J. 

AUGUST SCHEDULE

 Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out in August!

Main Feed:

8/06 - Episode 754 – Gamer (Live in Atlanta)

8/13 - Patreon Unlock Episode: Episode 362 – Jurassic World

8/20 - Episode 755 – From Dusk Till Dawn (Live in Austin, featuring the GRAND FINALE of the VHS Trailer Game for Season 14!)

8/27 - Patreon Unlock Episode: Once In A Lifetime #1: Stalked by My Doctor

Patreon Episodes:

We Love Movies – Episode 753: The Crow

Animation Damnation: Silverhawks: “The Origin Story” (s1, e1)

The Nexus: TOSTAS: “Yesteryear (s1, 2), TNG: “Data’s Day” (s4, e11)

Gleep Glossary: Thracken-Sal Solo

MelR0210: 90210 “Wild Horses” (s3, e14), Melrose Place: “Imperfect Strangers” (s2, e29)

Once in a Lifetime: Danger in the Dorm (2024)

PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION

 On Screen Live will also be taking a nice little break in August, but man is it a fun show! We just put out our “Season Finale” with our very popular and not divisive review of Deadpool & Wolverine!  Subscribe to our channel so you never miss a drop! Check it out on our YouTube Channel!.

We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David!Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboardepisode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes likeRampage (2018),Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Draculaand Saw III. Like we said above these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 

TJ Hooker…Is back! And this time Eric and Ben follow T.J. to Chinatown wherein he battles a snake!  Listen here!

 

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Speed Live Show Bus Movie, Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril logos, as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have The DILF Den, and a Crispy Critters design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  There’s a ton of other great designs like The VHS Trailer Game logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast, design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! See you next month for the premiere of Season 15!  

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies